Leagues Support New-mom Leave

March 14, 1985|By Georgia Dullea, The New York Times

HARRIMAN, N.Y. — After hearing from experts in the fields of child development and social policy, a conference of the Association of Junior Leagues on Saturday added its voice to the chorus calling for a national policy that would give working parents the right to take some form of infant care leave without loss of job security.

Parenting leaves were among several options to deal with the lack of decent affordable day care cited in a comprehensive report issued in October by a congressional committee on children, youth and families. The Congressional Caucus for Women`s Issues plans to introduce legislation that, among other things, would provide unpaid leaves to parents of newborn or newly adopted children.

Sherry Cassedy, an attorney representing the caucus who brought her 2- month-old daughter to the Junior League conference, said that ``with the conservative climate on Capitol Hill, the yuppie generation, the baby boomlet, increasing concern about the family as an institution, about lower-income families and single heads of households, parental leave could be a very popular issue.`` But, she warned, ``That is not to say that a bill for specific proposals will be popular.``

In any case, none of the 45 participants at the conference suggested that a national parental leave policy alone would solve the complex problems of many families caught between the need of young mothers to work out of the home, the need of infants for quality care and the lack of adequate maternity benefits.

Among the experts at the conference, which ended Saturday, speaker after speaker recounted being besieged by requests for information about pregnancy leaves, maternity leaves, paternity leaves, parenting leaves and disability leaves and for explanations of the distinctions.

Noting that many employees and employers had thought these issues would be resolved by the Pregnancy Disability Act of 1978, which requires that pregnancy-related disabilities be treated like other short-term disabilities, Sheila B. Kamerman of Columbia University`s School of Social Work said: ``Seven years later, this is a hotter topic than ever. Why?``

Part of the answer, she suggested, lies in the changing face of the American work force. The proportion of women in the work force, now 44 percent, is expected to rise to 56 percent by 1990. It is estimated 80 percent of all employed women will become pregnant at some point in their careers. The fastest growing segment of the work force is mothers of children younger than 3. In the past decade, the labor force participation rates of women with children younger than 1 year increased by 52 percent.

Yet studies by Kamerman and Alfred J. Kahn, co-directors of Columbia`s Cross National Studies Program, show most mothers return to their jobs less than six months after childbirth. Many return much sooner, in part because they fear losing their jobs and in part because they need the income. Only 40 percent have access to maternity benefits and those who do rarely receive full wage replacement and more than six weeks` leave.

Unlike 75 other countries, including Canada, France and West Germany, the United States has no provision guaranteeing women the right to leave work for a specified period to care for a baby, and no job protection or cash benefit to help compensate for not working because of pregnancy or childbirth, according to studies by Kahn and Kamerman.

Other experts, most notably Edward F. Zigler, director of the Yale Bush Center Advisory Committee on Infant Care Leave, pointed out that public policy on infant day care in this country continues to be on the basis of ``let the buyer beware.`` Not only have direct federal subsidies for low-income families been reduced, but also, under block grants, federal standards designed to provide minimum standards for quality of care have been abandoned.

As a result, said Zigler, whose committee has just completed an analysis of state licensing requirements for infant and toddler day care, some states, like Mississippi, have no requirements. Others, like Arizona, allow one adult to care for as many as 10 children younger than 2 years old.

Although studies continue to show ``what my grandmother could have told you,`` Zigler said, that children do well in good day care and poorly in bad day care, quality care is scarce and beyond the budgets of most families. In New York City, for example, quality infant care can cost as much as $6,000 a year, he said.